1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a flat multi-conductor cable connector, more particularly, to a connector for a flat multi-conductor cable which enables a change to be made to the circuit configuration within the connector and is suitably used to, for example, mount a LED unit made up of a plurality of LEDs.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a conventional technique for arrangement of various types of many devices having short mounting leads such as LED on a single flat cable, as shown in FIG. 1, the devices 2 are respectively mounted on substrates 1, and then the substrates 1 are connected to each other through a flat cable 4 with wire connectors 3. However, the operation conducted on site for placing the substrates 1 on arbitrarily portions of the flat cable 4 is disadvantageous from the viewpoint of quality control and operating efficiency. In addition, the mounting process involves the processes of soldering and checking, making it impossible to reduce the number of components and the manufacturing costs.
To avoid this, conventionally, attempts have been made to directly mount various types of devices on connectors connected to a flat cable without use of the substrate requiring the soldering process and the like.
On the other hand, a LED unit made up of a plurality of LEDs has, for example, the function of changing color. Therefore, a plurality of LED units are attached to a single flat multi-conductor cable, so that the color of light emitted from each LED unit can be selectively changed. In this manner, the widening of the scope of application of LEDs has been attempted. An example of such a LED unit is shown in FIG. 2. The LED unit 23 shown in FIG. 2 is made up of a set of three LEDs 27 as shown in FIG. 3. Since each of the three LEDs 27 has two terminals, the LED unit needs six terminals 18 in total.
However, when a plurality of types of LED units are connected to a flat multi-conductor cable, if the connectors used are of only one type, it is difficult in actuality to address various requirements that, for example, a circuit system is changed depending on the type of LED unit to change the color of light emitted from the LED unit. To solve this difficulty, a plurality of types of connectors are conventionally used. However, when, for example, the process of pressure-welding an electric wire conducted on site is taken into consideration, it is clear that the use of a plurality of types of connectors is disadvantageous from the viewpoint of quality control.